In The Atlantic, Professor Baz Dreisinger Examines America’s Influence on Mass Incarceration across the Globe

In her article, “Prison: America’s Most Vile Export?,” published in The Atlantic magazine, Professor of English Baz Dreisinger discusses conditions in super-maximum security prisons of several countries in an article titled . She expands on this topic in her upcoming book "Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World" (February, 2016) – a first-person odyssey through prisons in nine countries, beginning in Africa and concluding in Europe, that offers a rethinking of one of America's most far-reaching exports and national experiments: the modern prison system.

Dreisinger is the founder and Academic Director of John Jay College’s Prison-to-College Pipeline program which offers college courses and reentry planning to incarcerated men throughout New York State, and broadly works to increase access to higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals.

She is also the author of Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture, a cultural history of whites who pass as black. As a journalist and critic, Dreisinger writes about Caribbean culture, race-related issues, travel, music and pop culture for such outlets as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Forbes Life, and produces on-air segments about music and global culture for National Public Radio (NPR). Together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Spirer, she produced and wrote the documentaries "Black & Blue: Legends of the Hip-Hop Cop," which investigates the New York Police Department's monitoring of the hip-hop industry, and "Rhyme & Punishment," about hip-hop and the prison industrial complex.